Making earned media campaigns that work for B2B tech businesses

Author – Jon Clements, Metamorphic PR

What vital elements create a B2B technology earned media campaign that cuts through the noise in any sector?
After a fourth year providing media relations consultancy to intellectual property firm Appleyard Lees’ Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report – and improving performance year on year – we’ve learned that success is based on certain key components:

1. Having superlative source material
The Inside Green Innovation: Progress Report, which reveals the current state of global innovation in a wide range of environmental technologies, is the product of exhaustive research by numerous Appleyard Lees attorneys – each experts in their field. Access to in-depth insights, backed by robust data and commentary, is a great foundation for making impact with a media campaign.

2. Working with the right agency
The right agency will help shape a report that ensures a reader is rewarded for their interest and time spent to learn about the topic. Being able to handle technical topics but also translate often-complex concepts into plain language is a vital agency skill.
And homing in on the most compelling story angles from a long-form report can mean the difference between gaining media coverage or ending up on the newsroom’s digital “spike” with the other non-stories.

3. A precision process for media targeting
Conducting solid research into the media to target for each story is essential. Obvious, right? But the practice of relying solely on media databases to distribute press releases indiscriminately has, historically, given public relations a bad name among the media. Knowing the right media title to reach with the right topic and the most engaging angle should be a careful and precision process – as you rarely get a second chance to get a story heard.

4. Measuring what matters
Achieving column inches online or in print is not an end in itself. It’s about educating and informing your audience to influence, persuade and ensure they remember who did that. Therefore, understanding the effectiveness of your media activity – and the various elements that heighten the chances of gaining attention and shifting perceptions – is critical.
Partnering with Experienced Media Analysts for media evaluation provides insights into both quantity and quality of media relations performance: estimating the number of people reached with the campaign, the volume of website traffic generated, the proportion of topics covered and messages delivered, along with the prominence and exclusivity of a company or brand across all coverage (click here to see the full report). The greater the combination of compelling elements in media coverage, the more likely to achieve tangible outcomes.

5. The bonus of building long-term collaboration
Working collaboratively, year after year, builds trust and a depth of understanding between company and agency. And this tends to create results that improve with each subsequent campaign.
For example, comparing 2023’s media campaign results with 2024’s for the Inside Green Innovation: Progress report showed:

• 22% increase in coverage
• 30% increase in reach
• 19 percentage point increase in new website visitors during campaign period
• Exclusivity of brand mentions in coverage rising from 74% to 85%
• Average brand mentions per piece of media coverage increasing from 2.2x to 2.6x

Download our free guide to mastering the media for green science and technology businesses and take your media campaigns to the next level.